The present invention relates to methods and systems for synchronizing e-mail communications among multiple applications in a computer system. In particular, it relates to methods and systems for providing one to one e-mail collaboration among multiple users working on related tasks using discrete software applications.
As enterprises continue to grow in size and complexity, they have attempted to bring their business processes close with those of their customers, suppliers, and other business partners to provide more efficient services and to preserve their competitiveness. One solution was to integrate business processes beyond enterprise boundaries and to provide collaborative business processes by sharing enterprise software applications that were deployed by organizations to implement business processes.
SAP's Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) application is an example of such a shared enterprise software application. The CRM application provides collaborative business processes to support marketing, sales, and service of a product among multiple users. In particular, the CRM application supports multiple users working on related tasks, allows access to the same data, and helps its users coordinate and keep track of ongoing projects together. The heart of the CRM application or any other interlinked enterprise software applications is a messaging system. Electronic mail (e-mail) is used to notify users, to obtain responses, to send alerts, and to provide communication among all the multiple users. E-mail messages also may include links to databases, intranets, and the internet. Thus, the CRM system includes its own e-mail server with SMTP capability. Typically, clients and business partners communicate through their e-mail application (e.g., Microsoft's Outlook, Lotus Notes, among others) and the contents of these e-mails are processed and stored by centralized enterprise software applications. The CRM application also sends notifications and responses to the clients in electronic mail form. In this way, the users of the CRM application can provide flexible and reliable communication among all users and maintain relations between the company and its clients, business partners, and other interested parties.
Often, however, the clients or business partners' own e-mail applications are written in different programming languages and run in different runtime environments or on different platforms than the interlinked enterprise software application. Thus, inbound e-mails that are related to the CRM application might arrive in an existing e-mail application. Outbound e-mails that are related to the CRM application may also lose its contents when transmitted to the recipient's e-mail application if not compatible. To obtain synchronized e-mail logs in two applications, therefore, users are often required to store copies of redundant e-mails and data on multiple applications. For example, an operator may maintain the same e-mails and data on his/her e-mail application as well as the shared enterprise software applications such as the CRM application. To relieve operators from having to copy common e-mails/data multiple times for different applications, there is a need for a method and system that provides collaborative e-mail communication among multiple users.
Accordingly, the present inventors perceive these and other needs in the art.